CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Hayley reports: Very cold start today - luckily no rain, though, and the sun made a very welcome apperance this afternoon. The North side of Trench VI was trowelled today with numerous finds being uncovered including: Medieval pottery, Post-Medieval glass, porcelain, clay pipes, a handle possibly belonging to a small slipware jug and the highlight of the day, a completely intact green glass bottle which amazingly was uncovered whilst using a mattock. Inscribed on the bottle was "Edmundson's & Co. Birkenhead" and an image of what has been suggested as "a witch on a swing". Fingers crossed for more exciting finds next week! Karen reports from Trench VII - Today has been less of a paddle in the mud and more of a trample in the trench! Our group continued to trowel back a very wet trench with varied success. We continued to find lots of small finds like clay pipe stems, glass and sherds of pottery, mainly dating from the post-medieval period. However Rachel and ...

Gary and Mike C report: Today we found an interesting T-shaped feature in Trench VI, which was producing mainly post-medieval pottery in the top layers of fill. Not completely excavated, yet, so hopefully we will understand better what it may be tomorrow. Rained all day mostly, but the day was brightened by what may be our Group's first Roman find of this dig - a small sherd of very abraded orange ware. Hopefully there will be more to come! Gemma writes: Today has been quite good over all - apart from the weather as it has been very wet and a bit cold. My group worked on Trench VII today. It needed mattocking, which was rather strenuous; however, the technique was easy to pick up. We mattocked to break up the ground's surface since we needed to dig deeper. In the afternoon, the weather was a bit better and our group was getting used to levelling again with the staff and dumpy level. With these refreshed levelling skills, we will be able to record levels of the site later on. L...

Rachel writes: Today started off okay - my group began by trowelling the trench that was dug on Tuesday and just generally making it neater, and picking up any finds that were there along the way. After a break we started on the context sheets, and then the rain began. By lunch both the sheets and us were a bit soggy! After lunch my group had a go at taking levels, which involved measuring the ground at different points. This was fun, even if we did have trouble trying to get it to focus and reading the numbers at first. People passing by seemed to be interested in what we were doing and many stopped to ask questions. At one point two ducks also wandered onto the site. All in all it was an enjoyable, if rather rainy day on the site. Jonathan writes: The day started off troweling through the back fill. This continued throughout the day and was interspersed with other tasks such as levelling in the afternoon. The weather was a bit temperamental, raining at the most unfortunate times (suc...

Well we got the dig started today, a bit slowly at first whilst the digger (diesel-powered, yellow mechanical one that is) opened up the trench from last year (trench VI) digging 'gently' down through the backfill to the undisturbed archaeological layers beneath. We also opened up a new trench, number VII, which should get us close to the bit of old Cholmondeley's Mansion which we found in 2007. All the students turned up bright and enthusiastic and the weather was pretty good, too. Let's hope both of those last! They had a good go at cleaning up and trowelling and we started to turn up a good variety of finds already - some probably lost on picnics in the park. Simon